Sunshine in Seattle

Sun glorious sun! Monday we woke up to grey drizzle....nasty, dark, and depressing. The weather man promised a good day though so we decided that it had to clear up any minute! I mean it had to because today was the BIG day. This was the day we were going to RIDE THE DUCK! I had already purchased our tickets online before we left so we were committed to go...rain or shine. We desperately wanted sun though. One day of playing tourist in the rain was enough. So once again we had our free breakfast....which was actually pretty good. We packed up our room, loaded the car and took off for the Space Needle. The kids were pretty excited about the seeing it and asked a zillion questions. Oi! As we got closer and closer to downtown we could see the clouds breaking up and the sun was warming up our car nicely. It was very promising. We parked right beside the Space Needle and took a nice walk around the grounds. The whole area is called Seattle Center and it is home to the Children's Museum, theatres, Pacific Science Centre, Monorail and EMP Music museum to name a few. It's a wonderful place to hang out. We took the kids to see the giant fountain. They loved it and I'm sure were disappointed that it wasn't quite warm enough to run through it.

We also leaned up against some brozne structures that were all warm and toasty from the emerging sun and watched airplanes coming into Sea-Tac airport. There was about one plane every two minutes or so for a stretch there. Finally it was time to head to our tour at 'Ride the Ducks'. Have any of my readers been on this tour? Let me tell you, it was worth every penny. What fun we had! The driver was a zany and completely crazy guy with a very American way about him. Big accent, big laughs, and a big bald head :) He was hilarious! He drove us all through downtown and gave us lots of interesting tidbits about history and the people living there now. Such as....90% of people in Seattle own bikes. Or did you know that Seattle sells the most sunglasses in the country? He also was very cheeky and since he was on a microphone headset he could call out to people on the street. I haven't laughed so hard in ages. He would honk at unsuspecting people making them jump as they were crossing crosswalks, yell out things to people with weird hair or whatever. It was all in good fun and most everyone took the teasing good naturedly. He also played lots of disco '70's music which was a hoot. There was this guy jogging beside the 'duck' and we were keeping pace with him so he cranked the Rocky music and we cheered him on. What a laugh! Another funny moment was when we were stopped at a red light beside a huge carwash. There were guys out there buffing cars by hand so our tourguide cranked some '70's tune called 'At the Carwash' and those guys out there put on quite a dance show for us!

First photo is of a fire hall (taken for hubby). Second is the new stadium where the Mariners play and the third is just a pretty street.

After we had toured on land the 'duck' took us on a water tour of Lake Union. We saw many very expensive houseboats and yachts. He knew all kinds of interesting things about how much some of the places cost and who lives in them. He also pointed out the houseboat on which 'Sleepless in Seattle' was filmed. Very cool! Anyhow, that tour was 90 minutes long. After which we decided we'd better head home before rush hour started. At this point it was around 2:45 so we managed to time it quite well and made good time getting back. Unfortunately a big line-up awaited us back at the border. BUT...that was expected and we just patiently inched our way back up to Canada.

Chad's feelings on the topic of border line-ups!

So now we are home and have some wonderful memories of our family adventure in Seattle! Oh yeah...and I didn't take any pictures of food. Weird! I only realized once we got home. Oh well...I must say that eating out three days straight isn't as good as it sounds. I missed veggies and fruit. As soon as I got home I had an apple and a plate of yams :)